XII Römermuseum

[Translate to English:]

Going insane.

In Egon’s school years, a sanatorium was housed in the spacious rooms of the former convent. Treatment was expensive there. Many well-to-do patients were afflicted with nerve disorders and hallucinations. “Going insane” was the common parlance back then. Egon’s father certainly did in the late stages of his battle with syphilis: memory loss, hallucinations, dementia. As many as one third of all patients in psychiatric wards were suffering from this treacherous and widespread disease at the start of the twentieth century.

[Translate to English:] Many aristocratic girls did not marry in good time. What was to be done with them? What was to be done with upper-class women who became widows? The Imperial Convent at Tulln was the answer in both cases. New members were welcomed with open arms, not least because of the dowry they brought with them. And it freed them from garden work as well as nursing and pastoral duties. Yet the prioresses of the Dominican Order had good connections at the imperial court. In 1443 the Habsburg King Friedrich III personally granted them the privilege of “annually transporting ten fuder (cartloads) of wine to Passau and two pounds of salt toll-free through Austria.” But then a fire destroyed the large convent and its stately church. The nuns went into debt rebuilding the complex. And before long, they were forced to leave their refuge of faith on the banks of the Danube.